I started out really loving this book. And then . . . well . . . it all went to hell (pun intended).
The Mercy Seat starts out as a tale of the old West. It is told from the point of view of a 10 year old girl named Mattie, whose father gets involved with some shady gun-making business in their small town in Nebraska. With the law after them, they must move west. Along with Mattie, her brothers and sisters and parents, her uncle and his family move west together.
There are all kinds of interesting things going on in the beginning. Mattie is only 10 but as the eldest, she takes on much of the burden of motherhood. They get as far as a mountain pass and decide to stop for the winter. Before they can move on, Mattie's mother drops dead of a broken heart, as she does not want to raise her children in Eye Tee (I.T. - Indian Territory).
When the mother dies and the family moves on, all of a sudden the perspective changes from Mattie's to that of some weird medicine woman. We then hear all about all kinds of weird rituals that are a juxtaposition of Christian and Indian rituals. There's magic and paranormal stuff going on. It is a harsh contrast to the realism and historical fiction tone that had been going on (and that I'd enjoyed).
There's also this whole plot of Mattie being taken by Scarlett Fever and becoming psychic, seeing dead people and contemplating all kinds of weird shit. None of this made any sense in the parameters of the rest of the book, nor did it have any impact on the rest of the plot.
I was really frustrated with it, but about 150 pages later the plot took a sharp turn once again. It then became about a gunslinging battle between Mattie's father and her uncle. All of a sudden the story was told through the 'first hand' accounts of about a dozen people who didn't actually see the gun battle first hand, but had pieced together stories. I found this to be much more interesting, though still not what I'd signed on for.
There were also some clear comparisons trying to be 'subtly' made to Cain and Abel that I thought were simply overdone and didn't work as the author seemed to intend them to.
All in all, I'd say I liked about 1/3 of the plot of this book
As far as the writing? Holy long paragraphs and semi-colons! An example :
In this way he was able to live, this means he had discovered, not from will but from necessity, from his nature, which resisted words, resisted thought in language; which, in the twisting of grief, was unwilling to allow even that which is most human -- the ability to plan and look back, project and regret -- as if the meted portion had all been doled to his brother, to make his brother fired with language, paralyzed with future, locked in past, and these not genuine past or future but only that imagined in the volcanic language of Fayette's own mind.
Note that is ONE sentence. The entire book was written this way. And by 'this way' I clearly mean 'over written'.
Overall, I felt like the author tried to take this book in about 4 different directions. Any one of those directions would likely have made for a decent book and the combination of directions might have been pulled off by a better author. I just didn't see the talent in Askew.
6/10
YTD:
Books read : 19
Pages read : 5,696
Currently reading : Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris & The Color Purple - Alice Walker & U.S. Hands Off the Mideast! - Cuba Speaks Out at the United Nations - Fidel Castro and Richardo Alarcon
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